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It was a relatively normal night shift until the three were attacked by armed prisoners.

They managed to barricade themselves inside a cell, with prisoners baying for their blood outside.

Mick Pezzano was one of those officers.

"If there was any issues of inmates coming in wanting to take us out, we were going to, well, we were going to fight," he told me.

Outside the wing, 10 members of the Metropolitan Emergency Unit were forming up.

They could hear their colleagues’ screams.

"There was a lot of noise from the prisoners and screaming, we could hear the officers who were screaming out," Dave Golledge remembered.

Mr Farrell led the team into the fray as 13 Wing was erupting.

"It was really a hand-to-hand combat situation," he said.

It was a pitch battle that lasted seven or eight minutes.

"When you are confronted by people who want to pull your head off and hurt your colleagues, that's a long time," Mr Farrell said.

They were up against more than a hundred prisoners - some of the state's toughest.

Among them were Comanchero bikies who had been involved in the Milperra bikie massacre.

"It was a pretty scary event and a very dangerous one," Bill Dodson said.

"They had lumps of wood, metal bed ends and boiling hot water."

But the MEU team knew their mates were in trouble, big trouble.

"I feared for their lives," Mr Farrell said.

So the MEU barrelled into three-storey wing. It was violent and it was ugly.

"They threw buckets of boiling water on us, they stabbed at us with broken broom handles to stop us from getting in there. It was just the most scariest thing I have ever experienced," Mr Golledge said.

Eventually the MEU got the upper hand and rescued their colleagues.

"The actions of those officers that came to our rescue that night, you know, it's something I'll never forget," Mr Pezzano said.

"They were coming in blind."

But now, 30 years later, the retired prison officers are fighting a new battle, this time against the NSW Government. They've never been recognised for their bravery.

"We are just sort of disappointed that over all these years it's been sort of pushed under the carpet," Mr Dodson told me.

Their pleas have, essentially, been ignored by successive governments.

The Opposition's Corrective Services Minister Guy Zangari said it’s time to correct the wrong.

"This is about recognising the work that was done that was done that night," Mr Zangari said.

"It is time to recognise the bravery. It was one of the most brutal hostage situations.

"These guys put their lives on the line."

Corrective Services said the Metropolitan Emergency Unit was sent a letter of commendation.

But the medal system wasn’t introduced until 1989, three years after the riot, so bravery medals will not be issued retrospectively.

Mr Golledge summed it up best.

"We sent ten men in, eventually, to face nearly a hundred prisoners, violent offenders, the worst in the state, to rescue three of our colleagues,” he said.